Lebanon tackles garbage crisis on World Cleanup Day
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Millions of volunteers from around 150 countries took part World Cleanup Day on Saturday (September 15), in what was promoted to be the biggest civic action in human history.According to the Lebanese World Cleanup Day leader, Aline Chirinian, the project started in Estonia in 2008, when the initiative attracted around 5% of the whole country’s population and gathered more than 10,000 tons of waste.
Throughout the year it evolved and developed to become a world-wide event that hopes to clean up litter and mismanaged waste from beaches, rivers forests and streets.Landfills and dump sites – many infamously known as “garbage mountains” – have mushroomed across Lebanon since the 1990s. The mess peaked in 2015 when the capital’s main landfill shut down, after running well beyond its expiry date.Politicians wrangled over what to do, and the trash crisis of 2015 sparked a protest movement.